


The Blade for the Honey

by MonstrousRegiment



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gift, M/M, birthday fic, loki remembers all his lives, this is my headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-09-17
Packaged: 2017-11-14 11:31:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonstrousRegiment/pseuds/MonstrousRegiment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Steve wants is to sit down and actually <i>talk</i> to Loki, about a hundred million things he knows Loki knows but won’t share. Loki sees through the ages and through space and time like they are glass walls, thin membranes he can push against and walk through rather than impenetrable walls. He sees his lives, all the many different existences of a creature named Loki, unfold one after the other like a film, birth to death and death to birth, rebirth, crucifixion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blade for the Honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CampfireTreat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampfireTreat/gifts).



> CAP. I was only MORE THAN A MONTH late with this gift, jesus fucking christ. I suck. I hope you like it! I LOVE YOU.

Steve doesn’t know how they end up in his bedroom, how they made it all the way from Tony’s pillow-pit in his penthouse to Steve’s room in his own floor in Avengers Tower. He never knows how they end up here at all. He tells himself over and over that tonight he’s not going to touch him, he’s just going to sit there and actually have a god-damned conversation, but whenever he makes any attempts towards that it seems like Loki takes it as a challenge, the line drawn in the sand just another limit for him to break. 

If there’s one thing Loki likes, it’s breaking limits and pushing at lines. Steve knows this, and it keeps him from being angry. 

He never gets what he wants, but he gets what Loki is willing to give him which is more often than not what they both need. 

What Steve wants is to sit down and actually _talk_ to Loki, about a hundred million things he knows Loki knows but won’t share. Loki sees through the ages and through space and time like they are glass walls, thin membranes he can push against and walk through rather than impenetrable walls. He sees his lives, all the many different existences of a creature named Loki, unfold one after the other like a film, birth to death and death to birth, rebirth, crucifixion. 

“In one life,” he says one morning, as they lay in bed, and he draws runes of green light on Steve’s sweaty chest. “I died in Jotunheim, and Odin took his spear to the realm in his sorrow, and laid it to ashes.” 

Steve takes a moment to let that sink in. 

“Odin loves you,” he says at length, letting his hand trail down softly over the long line of Loki’s spine, across lash marks and old scars, remnants of old tortures and lessons never learned, that Loki keeps because he’ll never let anyone break him, and he’s proud of it. 

“In some lives,” Loki concedes, eyes half-lidded and heavy, looking thoughtful and calm. It’s in moments like these, in the dim half-light of dawn, with his hair falling tangled around his face and his lips red and kiss-swollen, that Steve aches to draw him, to capture the sweet calm look of him.   
In the morning Loki puts on his armor, and in his leather and metal he shuts himself away as surely as he shuts out the world. 

“In this one,” insists Steve, lifting his hands to grip Loki’s head and make sure the god won’t move away. “He loves you in this one.” 

“You trust too much in Thor’s naïve views of the world.”

“You trust too little in _everyone_.” 

Loki makes a sound of disgust and twists his head away. “Do not hope to give me lesson on the particulars of my life in the assumption that you understand all that happens in it, Steven.” 

Steve sighs and finds the curve of Loki’s shoulder, squeezing. Loki isn’t the kind of man—God, demigod, creature—that finds comfort in touch. Steve wishes he was, because Steve himself is like that he’s not a man of words, and if only Loki would take some pleasure in the simple acts of holding hands… But that’s how Loki is, and Steve wouldn’t change him for the world. 

“I could understand more if you came around more,” he says, tone neutral. 

Loki sags into the mattress, dropping his forehead painfully to Steve’s shoulder. Loki is in this world only as much as he remembers to be, and sometimes he forgets to belong to it, flesh hard as ice, bones heavy like rock; something alien and impossible, existing only by its sheer willpower. 

“I will not join our little band of merry psychopaths, Steven,” he drones, in the tones of someone who is tired of a conversation they’ve actually only ever had once. Maybe they’ve had it often, in other many lives Steve is not privy to. 

“You could consult.” 

“You have Doctor Strange, and he is good enough in the matters in which you may seek instead my knowledge.”

Strange speaks of Loki as if Loki is a star the size of Alpha Centauri when he, himself, is half the size of the sun. There is some sort of hero worship there, in the same measure there is a fairly personal, intimate sort of _dislike_. Strange admires Loki as much as he thinks him unpleasant. That makes sense; it’s much the same for everyone else, except Thor, and his deep-running, flawless adoration for his not-brother. 

And then there’s Steve. 

“I just wish,” Steve starts, and stops. Loki stays still for a moment, waiting, waiting. When Steve says nothing, he lifts his head, combing back his hair with long black-nailed fingers, eyes narrowed in thought. 

“You wish I would not wander as much through other worlds.” 

Steve grits his jaw. “You come back different.” 

_Wrong_. Sometimes, he comes back wrong. Once, after spending a full week traveling in Jotunheim, he had returned looking emaciated and skeletal, hair much longer than should have been, eyes poison-green and ribs cracked. The time distortion at the roots of Yggdrassil had been his only explanation, and even days after his return, back to health and perfectly safe, Loki had barely slept between grinding lapses of insomnia or, much worse, violent bouts of bone-jarring nightmares. 

Steve has learned what to do with a disoriented, terrified god, which is something he’d never cared to learn and wishes he could trust he’ll never need to use again. 

But Loki does these things; leaves for days at a time and returns—wrong. And it takes him days, sometimes, to get the accent back smooth and suave, to be able to walk without sticking to the walls, without hiding from shade to shade. A lot of the times he is being some sort of agent for Odin, as the Allfather seems unwilling or unable to leave Asgard, but these things must be done, and the only one capable of them is Loki. 

It’s even worse when Loki leaves of his own accord, to do whatever _he_ feels he needs or wants to do, because those are more often than not the times he gets severely hurt. It makes Steve’s blood boil. 

Steve is often angry with Loki in ways nothing else can make him feel, intense and electrifying and alive, blood pumping, heart beating madly inside the cavity of his chest. The rest of the times things seem so dull, but then Loki is around and Steve sees—color, again, and everything is vivid and burns. 

And then there are moments like this. Soft, and quiet, with Loki lying stretched against his side, dark haired now when sometimes he’s got hair the color of fire—depends on his mood of the day, Steve figures—and cool-skinned and pliant. 

Steve gets up on an elbow and kisses him full on the mouth, gentle and sweet. Loki moans and opens his lips for him, immediately inviting more. Steve tries to slow it down—he always does—but Loki will have none of it. They make love like they always do—hard and fast and merciless. Like Loki. 

The sun comes up and Loki dresses, and then, like always, he leaves. He never speaks to Thor. _In another life,_ , Loki said once, _I was not his brother, and he and I were lovers_. 

_How was it being Thor’s lover?_ Steve had asked, somewhat amused by the complete surrealism of such memories, alien and yet so real for Loki. 

Loki had exhaled, a cold gust of breath over Steve’s chest. _He was gentle. Even as he pushed the dagger into my heart._

“Is it always violence?” Steve asks now, sitting up. His stomach feels like lead when Loki turns to him, with that odd sort of alien, remote calm in his eyes that prefaces the telling of a truth Steve will regret knowing. 

“My death? Aye. I must always end violently. Such is my fate.” 

“In every realm, in every life? Why? I don’t—“

“No,” Loki says softly, and, dressed entirely in leather and metal, armored and cold, he leans down to press a tender kiss to Steve’s lips. “No, you do not understand. You cannot.”

And, with one last breath of ice, he fades, like light slipping oily across the finger-print smeared lens of a camera. 

There. Gone. In the space of a breath and a blink. Just as always. 

Steve gets up and starts his day. Then he does the same the following day, and the next, and so on for the following week. Loki is often away this long, though the longer he takes to return the worst his condition is when he finally does, so while Steve is, of course, concerned, he’s not yet alarmed. 

Nothing is really amiss, nothing that would make Steve seriously worry, until Thor returns from a brief visit to Asgard and almost immediately seeks him out. 

“Have you word of my brother, Steve?”

Steve is somewhat startled. Though Thor makes no attempt to veil his concern for Loki (he’s probably incapable; deceit is not amongst his many talents) he doesn’t often directly ask. Especially as it pains him that Loki has chosen Steve’s company over his own, and no matter how many times Steve insists Loki confides in him as little as he does in anyone else, still Thor manages to feel hurt. 

“No,” he answers, as always, honestly. “Why? Do you?”

Thor’s jaw works for a moment, eyes dark as they dart away in thought. “Nay,” he settles for eventually, absent-minded and pale. “Not directly.”

“What’s that mean?” Steve asks cautiously, because when Thor or someone else in Asgard hear of Loki through a third party, it’s never good news. He’s not _supposed_ to be heard of. If someone knows something, if words or whispers had spread through distant realms like shifting skulking shadows, it means Loki’s plan went wrong. 

Steve feels something like a ball of lead drop on the bottom of his stomach when Thor’s eyes flicker to him and then away, and the Thunderer shakes his head and walks away, wordless and stiff. 

The knot in Steve stomach only grows for the next few days. It gets worse when Strange drops word of something odd and possibly malignant is taking place at the very roots of the World Tree. Strange has a self-admitted flare for the dramatic, which surprises absolutely no one considering his trade and occupation, but he’s not normally an alarmist. That is, when he says the world is about to end, he usually really does _believe_ the world is about to end, he doesn’t play around with that. 

More often than not, Steve spends the night in his own apartment in Brooklyn rather than on the whole floor Tony’s devoted to his exclusive use and inhabitance. He feels safer, more contained, in the smallish, dark apartment. It feels like it gives his life a frame he can live by, one he knows, an environment he is accustomed to and comfortable in. Too many of the things in the Avenger’s tower where brought in as things Tony assumed Steve would enjoy and prefer, and while he’s not wrong—mostly—they are not things Steve has chosen, himself. The place feels—alien. 

But with Strange letting S.H.I.E.L.D. know something is brewing and the team on alert, Steve chooses to spend the night as close to base as he can. He trains himself to exhaustion, takes a military-regulation-short shower—he can’t shake the habit of showering in under three minutes for the life of him—and goes to bed. Sleep won’t come easily in this room, someone else’s bedroom made for him, and he does as he did as a child; he counts his breaths, slow and even and deep. Breathes himself to sleep. 

He jars awake sometimes later. His mind tells him immediately that three hours and forty minutes have gone by; this means it’s twenty minutes to two am. Tony is probably in his workshop, but he rarely leaves it at night when he’s inspired, and no one else would trespass on Steve’s space without invitation. Nor is it possible for someone to have managed to invade it, not with the many defenses in place around the tower and especially around Steve’s floor. Loki’s braided intricate charms and shields to keep him safe, he’s said, and—

Steve sits up, tilting his head to listen intently. 

A shuffling noise, like something being dragged carefully across the floor, and then a figure on the doorway to Steve’s bedroom. Steve turns fully to face it.

Loki’s face is half in shadows, but even in the absence of light Steve can see the glimmer of bone on his cheekbone, and a long rend of ruined flesh down his lost, left eye. 

He’s out of the bed immediately, almost leaping across, catching Loki as he falls and lowering slowly to the ground. Blood stains the carpet and pools beneath him, copious and dark, warm as it soaks up Steve’s pajama bottoms. 

“Show me,” Steve says urgently, pulling as leather straps and metal buckles to search for the wound. 

Loki’s face, flesh torn apart on the left side, turns to press against Steve’s shoulder. His body goes slack, as if relaxed. 

“Loki, show me where you’re hurt.”

Maddeningly, Loki laughs. 

“I am well,” he says brokenly, and blood escapes the corner of his mouth. Steve feels himself go cold with dread— _I must always end in violence, such is my fate_ —

“Nay,” Loki sighs, hand coming up to grip Steve’s wrist weakly. “I have not come to you to die. Only for the shields I have placed here. I require rest, and safety.” 

Steve swallows. “What do you need from me?”

Loki’s lead falls back, almost drunkenly, against Steve’s shoulder. “Get me to the bed, if you will, and leave me there.”

“Let me—“

“No,” Loki murmurs. “No lights. I do not want you to see.”

“I can see your face,” Steve hisses, carefully pulling away the right shoulder guard and throwing it away. Loki’s armor is like a puzzle, straps and leather and metal connecting in maddening, incomprehensible ways to form a criss-cross of rune-covered layers that hide him almost entirely. 

“No lights,” Loki repeats, and the light bulbs on the ceiling and both bedside lamps explode, a shower of sparks and shards of glass like glitter. Steve bends over him to protect him—pointless considering the damage Loki has taken already. He’s shocked by the sloppy spell. Loki is never anything but neat and elegant, and that was little more than an artless shove of destructive power. Loki is obviously badly wounded. 

“Loki,” he says helplessly, pushing a damp, sticky strand of dark hair away from Loki’s right, remaining eye. 

“At least now Odin and I match,” Loki says humorlessly. 

“Is it lost, then? Will you keep this scar, too?”

Loki shifts weakly. “It would be impractical. It will grow back, over time. Get me to the bed, Steven?”

Steve picks him up, gathering him in his arms, and lays him gently down on his bed, working carefully to undress him in the gloom. Loki falls into one of his rare trances, a sort of deep rest where he is not asleep, for his eyes are open and follow Steve around the room, but he is not responsive, either. He does this sometimes, Steve knows, to allow his body to abuse his magic to heal itself. It would go faster if he slept, but he can’t bring himself to be completely helpless, not even alone in Steve’s spell-shielded tower floor, with Thor only two floors away and more than eager to lay waste to whomever dares lay a hand on his beloved little brother. 

The sum of Loki’s wounds at the time of his arrival that night is such Steve can hardly comprehend he has managed to drag himself across realms and to Steve’s bedroom. There is a limit to what even Loki Skywalker, Loki Mother-of-Monsters, Loki Silvertongue, can withstand. 

Steve has the feeling Loki lives in the search of his own limitations, and he dreads the day the god finds them. 

He watches, helpless and concerned, as skin and flesh knit together over bones that right themselves. It’s like watching those movies of the accelerated growth of plants, as flower buds blossom in seconds, instead of days, in front of his eyes. 

Loki rests for four days, unmoving but for the slow rise of his chest and his clear, green eyes. He does not speak, or eat, or move. Steve watches over him, acts naturally around the others, tells Thor he’s heard of Loki and he is well. It’s not exactly a lie’ Loki did say he was well. But it’s a deception, a lack of truth, and it pains Steve to have to say it, especially when Thor is overwrought with concern. 

Steve doesn’t, of course, know what Loki knows, burdened by the memories of many lives, forced to remember at times a Thor who took him as a lover and, at others, the words of a Thor who despised him and, ultimately, killed him. Loki himself seems sometimes trapped in a complex web of recollections he cannot efficiently sort, as if many layers of images pass before his eyes at any given time before, finally, receding. God only knows what they leave behind. Whatever the cause, Loki has long decided in this life, in this world, he and Thor will not be friends, and no manner of begging or shoving will sway him. 

So Steve doesn’t lie, but he doesn’t tell the truth, either. And it eats away at him. To handle it like that. 

Loki’s skin is back to flawless in two days, but covered in filth and dried, dark blood. Steve heats water, soaps a washcloth, and slowly, carefully, cleans him up. The worst of the injuries was a severe wound along his stomach, from the lower edge of his ribcage on the right side, across his stomach to his left thigh. A faint, white scar has formed over what used to be a ghastly, lethal wound, and Steve knows. This one, Loki will keep. 

He lays his hand on Loki’s flat stomach, hard muscle and soft, pale skin, and lets his shoulders sag, this once. _I wish you’d stop doing this to yourself._

If only Loki would to anything but the incomplete, obscure half-whispers of lives he’s lived and not-lived, lives lived in the past and the future and the many parallel presents. 

_I am a prisoner of fate._ he tells Steve, once, breath cold, lips soft against Steve’s temple, curling down to bend closer as he straddles him, lithe and light and feline where he’s sometimes heavy as icebergs, as mountains, as things Steve can’t hold in his hands. 

Steve spends the first night in the couch in the living room, the second in the bedroom chair, and the rest on the bed curled around Loki. The god’s eyes fall half-lidded when Steve gets in the bed with him, not exactly pleased, but—relieved, Steve thinks. If anyone can say they can get a somewhat accurate reading on Loki’s eyes, it ought to be Steve. They’ve been doing this—whatever this is—for over a year, now. 

It takes four days and by evening of the fourth Loki is perfectly whole, and Steve is absolutely _furious_. 

For the first time in four days he leaves the living area, storms to the gym and spends hours there, demolishing punching bags and robot prototypes Tony likes to randomly whip up and drop around for him to try. He breaks all of them some with more effort than others, rips a hanging bag out of the ceiling, and stands finally, heaving, flushed and covered in sweat, in the middle of the ruins of what sued to be his gym. 

“I am, in fact, more durable than the bags,” Loki’s voice says, rough through a throat not yet entirely healed, deep with the growl of languages Steve has never heard. “If you feel the need to turn your wrath upon its rightful target.” 

It’s not the right thing to say, and they both know it full well. Steve glares savagely at him, and he feels like he’s never, not once, not ever, been this _angry_. As always, Loki throws things in a new, deeper, darker sort of relief for Steve. 

“I don’t need to hurt you,” Steve growls. “You do that plenty yourself.” 

He sees the moment Loki armors himself, his eyes growing cold and his face becoming the suave, genial mask. Loki hides in distance and attacks from congeniality. That’s always been his way. Honey-coated blades, no less sharp for their sweetness. 

His chin raises, green eyes bright, but there is a slight, infinitesimal hesitation, a flicker, there and gone. Steve catches it, and understands. He’s been angry at Loki before, but he’s never confronted him while he’s angry. Steve likes to let himself cool off, get his head on right and _think_ before he opens his mouth. 

But he’s angry and Loki’s _here_ for a change, and Steve can tell he’s not going to cool off. Not even the physical exertion has dulled the edge of his rage, and that is a new situation entirely. 

“Think very carefully on what you’re about to say,” he warns, clenching his fists. 

Loki says, “I owe you nothing.”

The following silence rings in Steve’s ears as if a grenade had just exploded right next to his skull and stolen his hearing. He stares at Loki, very nearly hoping he’s just had an auditory hallucination and he has not just actually physically heard those words coming from his lover’s mouth, formed by his lips like sweet lethal poison. 

Steve’s mind is completely blank. He stares at Loki, and when he can’t look at him anymore, he turns around and, aimless, walks to the bench by the window. He swivels his head to the side, eyes seeking nothing in particular. His mouth is dry. He picks up the water bottle and takes a swig. His mouth is still dry. The ringing in his ears persists. He shakes his head slightly, as if trying to dislodge it. It’s still there. He takes another swallow of water, and when his tongue is still dry as the desert, he decided vaguely that orange juice might help. So he turns around and walks, past Loki, to the kitchen. 

He’s not aware of Loki following him at a distance until he sets the empty glass on the table. The orange tastes strong and tangy on his tongue and throat. With its flavor, like the blooming of a flower in the spring, the rage explodes forward from his chest, tinting his eyes red. 

The glass explodes against the wall, shards as small as ice crystals, and the noise and the violence of it make him flinch. Loki stares at him, face slack from shock. Steve is shocked, himself; he’s not given to such displays of childish, restless anger. But it feels like he’s choking on it now, like it must absolutely escape his body somehow, lest he turn it instead upon Loki. 

“So I mean nothing to you at all, is that it?” 

Loki swallows. “That is not what I said. I—“

“No? Isn’t it?” Steve snarls. “Are you going to play semantics with me after you’ve just told me that sleeping with me for a year, being my lover, _sharing my bed_ , means _nothing_ to you?”

“I care for you,” Loki says, and Steve is struck speechless by the unaccustomed sincerity. “That does not make me your slave, or prisoner.”

“Is that what you think love is?” Steve sputters incredulously. “A chain, a leash?”

“I am with you because I desire you, I—“

“You’re not with me!” Steve screams, and shocks them both again. He forces himself to turn away, pressing his hands flat down on the cold granite of the countertop. Counts ten breaths, in and out, long and clean. His mother’s voice, _Calm yourself. You’re the only one that can._

“You’re not with me,” he repeats, calmly now, turning around. “Do you realize that? You—you drop by, whenever you feel like it, and then you leave, and I never get a say in any of it. That’s not a relationship.”

Loki’s eyes darken. “You are not my keeper, that you may have a say in—“

“I’m not trying to control you,” Steve snaps. “I want to be with you. I want you to be around. I’m not immortal, Loki, do you realize that? I’m going to die. I don’t have forever to be around whenever you happen to remember me.” 

“That is not the truth,” Loki protests. “It is not so.”

“No?” Steve arches his brows, feeling his calm return to him, like a wash of cold all through his veins. “Tell me something, Loki. Tell me one truth. Can you do that for me?” 

“I have never lied to you.” huffs Loki. 

That’s a lie if Steve has ever heard one, but if that’s what Loki wants to play at, Steve can let it stand—for now. 

“What was I like in my other lives?” he asks, voice calm if the rest of him feels like it’s vibrating. “Did I hurt you, were we lovers? Were we enemies? Was I one of the ones that tortured you, or did I break you free?”

Loki stills, green eyes narrowed. 

“What is it you are asking?”

“I’m asking who I was in my other lives,” Steve says quietly. “Because obviously, whoever I was then and who I am now are not the same. I know you compare everyone to the other lives you’ve seen, and I sort of wonder if I’m the only one that suffers in comparison.” 

“I do not compare you to anyone.”

“That’s a lie,” says Steve, with as much certainty as he says that the sky is blue. “That is a lie, Loki, and not even a good one. You might try harder out of respect, at least.” 

“It is not a lie,” Loki says, and strain is beginning to show as he attempts to stay calm in the face of Steve’s own anger. Neither Loki not Steve are volatile or violent, but this has been mounting, as sure as any storm, and the moment one snaps the other will follow right along, Steve can tell. He’s also angry enough, and exhausted enough, that he’ll push Loki to that edge, if only to get him to react and _talk_ to him. 

He’s never seen Loki angry. Thor has told him his anger is something spectacular, glorious. Perversely, now, Steve wants to _see_ it. If it’ll show him even the tiniest truth of Loki, he’ll take it, and they’ll weather the storm somehow, he’ll pull them through. Steve’s never learned when to give up, and he figures now is too late to try. 

“Was the other Steve smarter?” Steve asks, veiling hostility with curiosity. “Were we lovers in other lives? Was he better educated, did he read more? Did he speak more languages? Did he have any different powers than I do? Oh, wait. Did you meet any Steves that didn’t go to the Supersoldier program? I sort of wonder what my life would have been like, if I hadn’t.”

“Short.” says Loki, voice clipped and cold. 

“Yeah, I figure I probably didn’t have a very good life expectancy. Some flu or other probably would have gotten me. What’s the world like, then, without Captain America? Or did someone else become Captain America anyway? How many lives have I—”

“I do not _know_!” snaps Loki, green eyes glowing, and that brings Steve up short. 

“You don’t know?” he blinks. 

“I cannot _see_ you,” Loki murmurs, eyes searching aimlessly around the kitchen, alighting in nothing for more than a fraction of a second. Steve can tell his wounds have taken a toll; he is restless and distracted as he speaks, off balance in a way he’s never seen him before. He hesitates briefly, like caught in the edge of something—and then, as easily as the glide of a great bird on the wind, he lets himself fall, and his eyes are jade green and clear as he stares at Steve. 

“You are not there,” he says. “In any of my lives, in any time, I cannot _see_ you. You exist, of course, you are alive, there is one Steve Rogers, I know of this. But try as I might I cannot see you, you are—a blur, a hum, a flash of light, there and gone, in the corner of my eye. I do not _know_ of your fate. Always it is braided with mine somehow, always we meet, but I do not know if you are my murderer or my savior.”

Steve attempts to process this and fails. 

“I don’t,” he hesitates. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“I am not allowed to see everything,” says Loki, reluctant. “Things re hidden from me, key things, things that play major parts in the unfolding of my many lives. They are hidden, that I may not know them and prevent them here.”

“But you know how you die,” Steve says incredulously. “When Thor killed you, and then when you were chained…”

“Oh, aye,” Loki says bitterly. “I may know the end, but I may not know how I arrive at it. Is it one particular lie that snaps Odin into chaining me to the rock? Is it one, smallest, preventable mistake? I cannot know.”

“So, what?” Steve spreads his hands, disbelieving. “You get to see every time you die, but you can’t understand what mistakes you made that got you there? How is that fair? How does that _help_?”

“Help?” Loki chuckles darkly. “It is not meant to _help_ me, Steven. This knowledge is my curse in this life, that I may watch my lives unfold, and see their ends, and are helpless to prevent or change it. Surely you do not think I am _blessed_ with this.”

“How is that _fair_?”

“There is no justice in this!” Loki yells. “Vanish your foolish thoughts of balance and fairness, they have no place here! How _did_ you think it was fair, before?” he asks venomously. “You are so very blind. How did you not see this as punishment? Do you fail to understand what it is like, inside my head? At any given time I hear five hundred voices in my mind, and most of them are me! And oh, they are so hateful!”   
Loki’s chest is heaving, now, cheeks pale and eyes feverish-bright. Something is unraveling, and Steve is standing there, helpless, and can do nothing but watch and be there to pick up the pieces when Loki’s done. 

“In every life, I am helpless to stop it,” he mutters, and all of a sudden he is as alien as fire in Antarctica, simultaneously more real and more fantastical than anything in Steve’s world. “Every time, in every life, in every world, I am an agent of chaos, I bring destruction, I sow death, I am the end of days. No matter how I try to change it, it is always me.”

He stops, and his eyes snap back to Steve. “One of me, once, said: I have been told that I am a prisoner of fortune. That the forces which created me are inviolate across many realms, and thus, those whom it uses are exempt from blame for their role in the tragedy of my life. And yet, I myself am ever to be held guilty for my own actions, which by the laws of the cosmos, I am helpless to change or alter. No matter the crimes committed against me, it is only I who will be called Criminal.”

There is a flash of something in Steve’s eyes, like sunlight glinting off gold armor though Loki is dressed down to tunic and pants, and before Steve can see the shape of it it’s gone. 

“And it is the truth!” Loki continues. “I can never change. I must always end in pain. I must always betray, always be betrayed—I have no free will, that I may seek to change my ways, that I may instead search for peace—“

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Steve interrupts. “You _know_ all these things. You can break the cycle.”

“You and I are not ruled by the same laws,” Loki snarls. 

“You don’t know that,” Steve says calmly. “You don’t know what I do in my other lives. But you know what? I refuse to be fate’s little chew-toy. I’m my own man, Loki. I live my own life. And I want you to live it with me.”

“You are simpleminded,” says Loki, and it almost sounds like a plea. “I am forced to live hundreds of lives at once, to listen to all my voices, and I cannot silence them! I cannot make one decision without seeing it taken in another life, and I can see the consequences, and yet I must make it! I am chained to it, as surely as any dog to a post!”

“Then why are you with me?” Steve asks, strained. 

“Because I see you!” and it sounds like it’s a truth breaking free at last. “I see you, you are _here_. And when you are, you are the _only_ one here. You make it all go away. You are—like the sun. You chase away the images.” 

He stops, breathing deeply, eyes closing. Steve is completely speechless, and something is caught in his chest—it might be a scream, it might be tears, it might be some form of violence. He doesn’t know. His throat aches. His feels light-headed and strange. 

Loki continues. “I do not compare you to anyone. There is nothing to compare you to. There is no one Steven, in another life, at the side of which you might pale. There is only _you_. You, Steve Rogers, Captain America, my lover. You are the only one I know. And when you are here, with me, there can only ever be you. There are no voices whispering in my head, no half-shadows and horrors at the edges of my vision.” 

Steve realizes he’s shaking. Loki looks drained, like something had clawed its way out of his chest and left behind nothing but an empty, pale shell. A truth like that shouldn’t hurt, but Loki looks devastated. There must be something else, that he hasn’t spoken of yet. Steve knows it’s going to hurt, and he knows he’ll take the blade for the honey. 

“Then why do you leave?” he whispers. 

“Because I will lose you!” Loki cries out. “I cannot have one such as you, I do not have that right—“

“What, because in other lives you always end in pain and blood?” Steve straightens, furious. “You don’t get to be happy, is that it? You don’t get to have one person, not even _one_ , that you can trust won’t hurt you?”

“Oh, you will hurt me, come time,” Loki hisses. 

“That’s not knowledge speaking, that’s _fear_ ,” spits Steve. Loki flinches. “You’re scared, that’s what this is. Do you realize how twisted that is? You’re with me because you can’t See me, but you don’t _stay_ with me because you can’t See me. I never win, do I?”

Loki opens his mouth, but nothing comes out of it. Steve takes the opportunity to come closer. How he wishes Loki knew to take comfort from touch. If only a hug could fix this, this way that a hundred lives lived at once have broken his lover. 

“I don’t know what we did in other lives, either,” he murmurs. “And I don’t care. This is the life I have, and it’s the only one _I_ get, Loki. I already cheated death once. It’s not going to happen again. I’m not immortal. I’m going to die one day. It’ll happen sooner, or later, but it’ll happen eventually.” 

“You presume I am not aware of that every waking moment?” Loki whispers, eyes wide. “Do you believe I do not fear that one day you will not be here, and I will be left, again, alone, tormented by lives I have not lived?” 

Unable to stop himself, Steve places his hands on Loki’s shoulders and squeezes. “I know it’s scary, and I’m sorry I can’t promise it won’t happen,” he says softly. “But I’m here now, I’m alive. I don’t have a lot of time, Loki, not like you. I want to live whatever of it I have being as happy as I can, and you being here, being _safe_ , being with me, makes me happy. And it makes you happy too, doesn’t it?” 

Loki’s jaw works, but he gives in to one brief, sharp nod that makes warmth blossom in Steve’s chest. 

“And you’re throwing it away on a fear born out of something that might or might not happen, Loki. Maybe we’ll go wrong, maybe it’ll end in bloodshed, maybe the world will burn, but damnit, for as long as this, here, between us, works, I _want_ it. You don’t get to take it away from me. You can’t make that decision on your own.”

“I know things you do not,” Loki murmurs, but he is swaying, now, like the gravitational pull of Steve’s personality is dragging him inexorably in. “I have seen things you cannot fathom.” 

“I don’t need knowledge,” Steve smiles. “I’ve got faith.”

“That is a very foolish thing to say,” complains Loki. 

“One of us has to get to be foolish and stupid in love, and you’re not fitting the bill, so—I’m talking,” he cuts when Loki’s mouth opens. “You’ve made enough decisions for both of us so far, so I’m making this one and we’re sticking to it. If we’re being together, we’re _together_. No more running around the realms getting yourself impaled—“

“That was _once_ ,” protests Loki. 

“Once is once too many,” Steve assures darkly. “You don’t _need_ to be doing these things, so stop doing them. Be careful. Ask for _help_. I know I’m mortal and weak, but if you have to go to battle, at least take Thor with you. You have cunning and magic, but sometimes you just need brute strength.” 

“I suppose Thor _is_ the brutest brute around,” grumbles Loki. 

Steve laughs and leans in to kiss Loki, a gentle press of lips, chaste and sweet. But almost immediately Loki’s lips are parting, and he’s being drawn in deep and wet. Sighing, Steve wraps his arms around Loki and pulls him in closer to his body, conceding out of habit to what Loki wants. And then, with a flash of understanding, he pulls back with a frown. 

“Is that why you’re always rough in bed?” he asks, tone low. “You’re waiting for the moment I betray you, so you don’t want me to be sweet?” 

Loki’s eyes seem to flicker, for a moment, as though he’s trying to muster the resolve to lie to Steve again but cannot manage it. 

Steve exhales. 

“We’ve tried it your way,” he says finally. “Now we’ll try it mine.”

Loki doesn’t seem to be sure what Steve means, but he makes no gesture of dissent, and he doesn’t jerk his hand away when Steve takes it and leads him to the bedroom. Loki’s had the courtesy to change the sheets and get rid of the blood, and the bed looks untouched and clean. 

Once in the bedroom, though, Loki catches up immediately, reaching for the hem of his shirt. Steve catches his wrists and pulls them away, and has to struggle to maneuver Loki onto the bed when the God insistently tries to push him against the wall. 

“Stop it,” he says, more sharply than he intends, when Loki arches deliciously up against him. “Stop trying to rush me, damnit.” 

“Are you not eager?” Loki replies, lifting his head with narrowed eyes. “If you do not desire it, I can—“

“Loki, you’re immortal, and I’m going to live for another two centuries at least,” Steve interrupts. “I think we have time for foreplay—stop squirming.”

Loki goes limp on the bed, in a brusque and petulant way, like a ragdoll. Steve could point out that for someone thousands of years old, that’s not precisely mature, but he instead does as he always does—he takes what he can get. He lies down, then, half on top of Loki, leaning voer him, and kisses him, slow and sweet like he’s always wanted to. Loki’s still stubbornly limp, but as Steve persists he starts returning the kiss, hesitantly, as if unsure of how to do it slowly. Steve doesn’t think that’s the case; Loki’s kissed him plenty, and he’s always very clearly known what he’s doing. 

Steve likes kissing. It’s a very intimate thing to do, and it can be so erotic, if you do it right. Steve’s never had time to kiss Loki right, before, so now he takes his time. Loki has thin lips, and they’re cooler than Steve’s human skin, but they’re one of Steve’s favorite parts of Loki’s face, because they’re so expressive—they turn down, the stretch, they become thin lines and they grow so dark when he kisses them. 

He tangles his fingers in Loki’s dark, soft hair, angling his head right and sucking on his bottom lip. Loki’s beyond acting like a dead fish now, making small, quiet noises as Steve kisses him. He’s stopped moving, at least, and is instead holding onto Steve’s arms, lying stretched out beneath him. Steve shifts up on an elbow, leaning down over him, and makes the kiss deeper. When Loki tries to lean up, rushing it, he pulls back again, sucking at his bottom lip. 

Loki sighs, and settles down, carding his fingers softly through Steve’s hair. Neither of them can get breathless easily, but Steve breaks away to kiss Loki’s sharp jaw angle, and when the God angles his chin up, baring his neck, Steve kisses that, too, and licks at his Adam’s apple. Loki shifts, restless. Steve lets his leg fall between his lover’s, and smiles when Loki clears his throat, cheeks blushing. He’s never seen Loki blush before, he realizes. He slides his hand discreetly beneath the green tunic, pressing down on Loki’s stomach. 

The muscles flutter under his palm, and Loki sighs. 

Time seems to simultaneously stop and rush. Steve’s never taken his time with Loki before, let alone had the opportunity to explore. Loki’s surprisingly relaxed and pliant beneath him, going along, kissing him softly, making noises he’s never made before. It takes them a long time to even get undressed and by then they’re both breathing faster, shallow breaths that are almost always a moan. 

Steve sits up, knees between Loki’s spread legs and slides his hands up from Loki’s hipbones to the edge of his ribcage, around to his back and back down to the small of his back, down the sides of his thighs to his knees. 

“Get rid of the glamour,” he murmurs, eyes half-lidded. He feels like his skin is on fire, like there’s spices running through his veins along with his blood. Loki’s lips are stained a dark, swollen red. It’s beautiful but fake. 

Loki throws an arm over his eyes, swallowing. “You ask for so much.” 

“Loki,” Steve starts, and shuts up when the skin beneath his palms, white and petal-soft, leeches of color down to grey and then to dark, midnight-blue. Long lines of raised markings blossoming across the expanse of Loki’s skin, around the outside of his thighs and arms, to his ribcage and pectorals, crawling up his throat and cheeks to his forehead. His stomach, his inner thighs, the soft and vulnerable parts of him, stay unmarked but for the scars Loki insists on carrying. 

Steve is stunned speechless but how beautiful and how _alien_ it is. He leans forward to kiss Loki’s lips, colder and softer now, and when Loki moves his arm away and opens his eyes, they are as red as Steve’s arterial blood. 

The skin beneath Loki’s markings is tough and unyielding, like armor plates. His stomach, though, is softer than ever. Fascinated by the shift in anatomy, Steve pressed won along it, from ribcage to where Loki’s erection juts out stiffly, and then he notices the difference. 

“Oh,” he says, eyes wide, curiously shifting up to look. “It’s—“

“Internal testicles,” Loki says breathlessly. “To keep them warm in the cold air of Jotunheim. You can still stimulate them,” he continues, guiding Steve’s hand to the soft flat space right above his erection and making him press down. Steve obliges, and Loki gasps, shivering. 

Steve smiles and moves away to kneel, again. Loki tastes different, too; the skin of his cock is delicate and soft between Steve’s lips, and the head of it goes so dark it’s almost black. Loki’s fingers comb Steve’s hair back tenderly, ghosting over his temples and cheekbones. 

He discovers another surprise when he starts stretching Loki. 

“There are no female Jotuns,” Loki says, voice gone rough. “Men sire and conceive. Jotuns are creatures of magic and intent. You must by force desire the child for it to be conceived. Does it disgust you?” 

Steve sucks Loki’s cock inside his mouth and ogresses down on his pelvis, stroking with his fingers. Loki chokes on a breath, spine arching up to an angle no human can easily reach. There is nothing, nothing at all, about Loki’s Jotun body that Steve dislikes. Loki seems to be much more sensitive, though, almost as if he’s never had someone else’s hands upon this skin. 

“Steven,” he gasps, leaning up to grasp at Steve’s shoulders. 

Steve smiles, coming up and stretching himself along Loki’s body, cold and soft. He strokes his hand gently up the underside of Loki’s thigh to his knee and brings it up and to the side, making more space for his hips. 

He doesn’t know how the rest goes, not rationally. He’s inside Loki and he’s thrusting and it’s so different but so good, and there is no space between them not even air. He pants against Loki’s cool lips and kisses him when he can manage it. Their cheeks and temples rub together. Loki’s arms are around his neck, and his nails are very sharp against his shoulders, dark and hard like onyx. 

Loki makes a whine low on his throat, something a human throat could never achieve, and hides his face in Steve’s neck, panting. 

“What is it?” Steve whispers, hips moving slowly. They’re pressed together so closely they can’t breathe together; his chest can only fill when Loki exhales. He’d be worried about laying all his eight on his lover, but Loki’s not about to asphyxiate, and it feels so good to have him there, trapped against his own overheated body and the mattress, where he can go nowhere. “What do you need?”

Loki’s hands slide down to his hips and pull at them, as if there were any way Steve could be any closer. It takes a moment for Steve to understand, and shift up on his arms to let his weight bear down on Loki’s stomach. The God gasps, head falling back. Steve balances his body on one arm and brings his other hand around between them, pressing down and rubbing. 

Loki’s spine does that thing again, bending over almost to a ninety-degree angle, and Steve hisses when his body clamps down on his erection almost painfully. It’s so good, and Loki is making this sound he’s never made before, and Steve is so close already—

He breathes through it, stilling, rubbing Loki’s stomach through what might be aftershocks, until the God goes limp on the bed beneath him and he can pull out. He lets his body fall to the side along Loki’s flank, catching his breath. He realizes that though Loki very obviously reached orgasm, there is no ejaculate on their stomachs and chests. 

“It would freeze,” Loki rasps, correctly, as always, interpreting his glance. “In the cold of Jotunheim. It would be harmful. We do not come unless we are doing the penetration.”

“Oh. But you did—“

“You do not need to stop,” Loki interrupts, nudging him with knee. “You may continue.”

“I know how sensitive you are afterwards.”

“Not in this form. Go on,” he murmurs, leaning to the side to kiss Steve. 

Steve would argue, but he’s not sure he has any arguments to make, and though he’s in control now, he still very much aches for it. He doesn’t expect to last much longer, but he’s not expecting Loki to use magic on him, either, so when his black-nailed fingers trail down his spine to the base of his tailbone and the world whites out in burning pleasure, he only manages to gasp. 

It takes a long moment for him to get his wits back, and realize he’s fallen completely on top of Loki. The sweat on his chest has become frost. He’s too lazy and relaxed to roll over and wipe it off, and he doesn’t mind the cold anyway. 

“What did you do?” he asks through a dry, rough throat. 

“I shared,” Loki mumbles sleepily. “That is the feeling of a Jotun orgasm.” 

Steve pauses. “That was… intense.” 

“Aye,” Loki sighs. “I am not sure I… _like_ it. I have only ever have sex in this form twice, counting this one, but the loss of control is distressing.”

Steve hums vaguely, unwilling to get into an argument about trust right then and there. He figures Loki will get there, with time. He’ll have to prove to him that he doesn’t mean to betray him by not betraying him. With the anger gone, his patience has returned. He’s in this for the long haul. He’ll wait Loki out. 

He turns on his side and tucks Loki in against his chest. Loki’s not shorter than him, nor are his shoulders are less broad, but he’s got long flat muscles where Steve’s run to bulk, so it’s natural for him to fit him like this. Loki likes being held, in any case. 

There is a long, comfortable moment of silence. Loki’s breath is cold against Steve’s neck, where his face rests on the shared pillow. Steve senses the hesitation, and then senses the defeat when Loki finally gives in and tucks his hand between Steve’s body and his arm, embracing him. 

“It’ll end bloody,” he said quietly, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead to Steve’s ear. 

“Maybe,” Steve concedes. “But it won’t hurt any less because you don’t let me love you, and this way at least we can be happy for the duration.” 

Loki considers that. “Your friend’s Stark mentality,” he says, somewhat amused. “If we are to go to Hell, we might as well go down in flames.” 

Steve smiles sleepily. “He’s got his moments.” 

When he wakes the next morning and Loki is still sleeping, curled like a cat, against him, he feels like his heart might burst out of his chest with happiness. Loki’s back to fair skinned, pale and human, but he is there, with him, in his bed. 

He’s _there_. The rest, they’ll figure it out as they go along.


End file.
